


Make a Little History, Baby

by Carrieosity



Series: Tumblr Bunnies and Ficlets - Supernatural [12]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Archivist Castiel, Friends to Lovers, Graduate Student Dean Winchester, Gratuitous History, Long-Distance Friendship, M/M, Self-Indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 02:05:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18650698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carrieosity/pseuds/Carrieosity
Summary: When Dean chose his thesis subject, he wanted to capture someone else's fascinating story. He had no idea it would turn into a story of his own.





	Make a Little History, Baby

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr prompt, anonymous: "What about archivist Castiel and grad student Dean? Maybe they finally meet after corresponding long-distance when Dean finally gets a small grant for travel funds for his dissertation? Love your work!!"

“It’s just ridiculous how many times I’ve fallen down this rabbit hole or that one, getting distracted from what I’m supposed to be researching by some other shiny bit of history.” Dean lifted his glass of beer and took a long swallow, letting his tired eyelids droop closed. He sighed in satisfaction as he dropped the glass back to the bar top. “God, it took me half an hour to get my eyes to focus when I turned off the computer tonight.”

“Aren’t you supposed to, like, hang a newspaper on your wall, or somethin’? Give your eyes a rest by focusing on that every so often? I think I read that somewhere,” Benny said from the other side of the bar, where he was polishing mugs that didn’t need polishing. It was a slow night at The Roadhouse, so Benny had plenty of time to sit and listen to Dean whine. Not that he was whining, Dean justified to himself; he was merely _decompressing_. Anyway, he was paying for his drinks, so that gave him liberty to decompress, whine, or whatever the hell he wanted to call it.

“Yeah, maybe,” Dean said. “Probably should take a real break every now and then, too. Sam keeps telling me that.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair and made a face. “Easy for him to say, though. Feels like he’s forgotten what it was like to be in grad school, now that he’s all settled in the job of his dreams.”

“What, bartending wasn’t your dream career?” Benny teased, laughing when Dean flashed him a glare. “No, take it easy, cher. We’re all real proud of you, going after what you want. Your brother ain’t wrong, though. Don’t go burnin’ out before you get to the finish.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Dean tilted his glass into his mouth, downing the last of his drink. “I hear you. Almost done, though. So close, I can almost taste it.”

“That’s just indigestion, from your ulcer.”

Throwing up his middle finger to the sound of Benny’s loud guffaws, Dean hopped from his stool and headed for the door, calling a good night on his way out. The night was chilly, and when he felt his phone buzz against his hip as he started the trek back to his apartment, he almost decided against pausing to pull it out and check. In the end, though, the part of his brain that was still buzzing about his thesis won out over the part that wanted the warmth of his bed.

_“I believe I’ve found your Holy Grail. Won’t know definitively until I travel into London tomorrow to see for myself, but my contact at the LMA swears it’s a first edition, and there are even what are possibly editor’s marks in the margins.”_

Dean’s breath puffed out in a huge white cloud as he froze in place, wide-eyed. _“Holy shit,”_ he responded to the text. _“Bell’s Rhymes? An original?”_

_“The original, technically. 1812, Northern Bards. Dean, what are you doing awake? It’s almost midnight there, and I thought you’d be sleeping.”_

Rolling his eyes, Dean replied, _“Well, it’s not even 7 AM your time, What are you doing at work?”_

There was a long pause, and then his phone screen flashed a response. _“Touche. I meant to be up early for a morning run, but when I saw the email from the Archives, I couldn’t resist letting you know immediately.”_

Dean was grinning, his earlier headache completely forgotten. _“I’m glad you did, Cas. I don’t think I can thank you enough for all the help you’ve given me on this. Call you later?”_

_“Yes, and maybe we can set up a Skype call tomorrow, so you can see the manuscript for yourself. I’ll send copies, of course, but if it’s the real thing…”_

_“Yeah,”_ Dean agreed. His blood pounded with excitement in his veins. If that reaction was only partly due to the amazing document find, well, nobody else needed to know.

* * *

When Dean had chosen his thesis subject last winter, he’d had no idea it would lead to a situation where he’d have to deal with actual _feelings._ The reason he was studying history in the first place was rooted in memories of how his grandparents and great-grandparents would tell all these crazy stories—their own stories, about their own lives, but they were wrapped up in the bigger picture of what was happening in the world, giving context and meaning to stuff he’d otherwise just read about in stale textbooks. History didn’t have to be viewed that way; it _shouldn’t_ be viewed that way, he decided, and so here he was, chasing a dream in which he could capture other people’s crazy stories in history texts that might actually mean something to bored teenagers.

What better place to start than one of Great-Grandpa’s stories? Dean had been stunned when a little poking around had revealed that it hadn’t been a tall-tale at all: one of his not-too-distant cousins, centuries before, had been at the heart of a tragic story that had ended in a public execution for treason against the crown. The more Dean read up on the guy, James Ratcliffe, the more fascinated he’d grown, and when he’d read about the actual castle that Ratcliffe and his widow were supposedly still haunting, he’d known that there could be no other thesis topic for him.

The problem, though, with researching a man whose charisma and dashing backstory were large enough to inspire literal folk songs in his honor was all the room for exaggeration, as well as the poetic liberties that people of the era often took with the stories. Additionally, the spellings of names in Hanoverian writings were often variable, so “Ratcliffe” might be “Ratclyffe,” “Radcliff,” or “Radclyffe,” and that didn’t even get into the weirdness of “Derwentwater,” the ancestor’s title. Dean had been on the brink of punching his computer screen when a classmate with colleagues at Oxford had offered him a contact email for a personal friend in the National Archives.

Castiel Novak had been a godsend. He was also a history buff, obviously, but he also was a freaking bulldog when it came to stubbornly refusing to give up on a good mystery. Dean’s research difficulties seemed to catch Castiel’s interest immediately, and he’d chased down clue after clue for Dean, making short work out of all the frustrating roadblocks and lost trails.

“I mean, not to look a gift horse in the mouth or anything,” Dean had said to him on the phone one night a few months into the investigation. “But I’m pretty sure our Stanford librarians would have kicked me to the curb by now, telling me to do my own damn research.”

“An American way of looking at things, perhaps,” Castiel had mused dryly. His voice, deep and rough over the phone lines, had been a huge shock to Dean the first time they’d spoken on the phone; he’d been expecting something much more delicate from a “Principal Records Specialist.” “Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, is it?”

“Dude, you may be on the other side of the ocean right now, but I recognize a midwestern accent when I hear one,” Dean had laughed. “You can’t mock Americans when you apparently are one, or at least were at some point.”

“Fair,” Castiel had agreed good-naturedly. “I haven’t been back home to Kansas in more than a decade, though. Maybe I can’t resist helping you because I’m desperately homesick? Your own voice is bringing back all sorts of pleasant memories for me.”

Grateful that his blush wasn’t visible over the phone, Dean had been unable to deny the surge of warmth in his gut. “Anything you like, Cas,” he’d said.

“Cas?” came the surprised response. “Are we on a nickname basis now, then?” Before Dean could stammer in embarrassment, Castiel had added, “Because while I wouldn’t mind that in the least, I do think it’s rather unfair that I have no information with which I could work in reciprocation. How on earth could I shorten the name ‘Dean’? Maybe you have some identifying mark I could use instead—perhaps some sort of hideous disfigurement, or an extra finger on your right hand?”

“I am not Count Rugen!” Dean had protested, and Castiel’s laughter had echoed deliciously in his ear.

Now, many months later, Dean found himself actually regretting the approaching end of his research. Truthfully, he probably could have called it a day a while back; he knew some of the other history grad students were muttering behind his back, calling him a brown-noser for all his extra work. He’d also heard a rumor or two that he was overcomplicating things to the point where he wouldn’t even finish. Nobody suspected the truth, though. Dean loved what he was doing, and he didn’t want it to be over. Not yet. The incredible story, the riveting little pieces of history…the far-away archivist who’d become one of his best friends.

Perhaps more than a friend. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but sometimes Dean got the feeling that their late-night (early morning) friendly talks were definitely at least bordering on flirting. He might have pushed the issue a little, but…they were half a world away from each other. Even if the feelings were reciprocal, how fair would it be to get either of their hopes up?

* * *

“Holy fuck,” Dean swore, eyes glued to the yellowed paper being held in Castiel’s white-gloved hands, displayed in grainy resolution over the webcam. “Just…Jesus. Wow.”

Castiel smirked openly at Dean’s loss of words. “When he read the three first lines, He then began to smile,” he intoned solemnly, reading the printed page in question. “And when he read the next three lines, the tears began to sile.”

“It’s the original Ballad of Derwentwater,” Dean breathed. “Missing the stanzas about how he rode off to London and got the axe, but that was all published later, right?”

“And said to be altered, as is the manner of all folk songs,” Castiel said with a nod. “This is as close as we can reasonably come to a primary source, I’m convinced. Even this one was published a century after the execution, even though people had been sharing and singing it all the while.”

“I can’t believe it,” Dean said, shaking his head. “My advisor’s going to shit himself. I can add that to the print of my paper, and I know there aren’t many Jacobite case studies focusing on cultural phenomena that have this kind of documentation. Fuck me, man.”

Castiel snorted. “Maybe dinner first,” he teased gently, and Dean bit his lip as his cheeks bloomed red.

“Think I owe you more than one dinner for this,” he deflected, then shook his head at himself. He couldn’t bring himself to shove the feelings down any more, whether he should or not. “I wish I could, you know. Buy you dinner. Take you out and…and really show you how much I…appreciate this. You.”

“My research help?” Castiel asked, though there was something in his voice, something slightly tense.

Dean shrugged. “That, and…” He didn’t know how to say what he wanted. Not being face-to-face made it so much harder to read body language, to get an idea of how this would be received. “I just…”

Castiel cleared his throat. Tilting his head speculatively, he made an abortive move to tap a forefinger against his lips, stopping himself when he remembered the value of the document in his hands. “You know, this doesn’t have to be the end of your research, Dean,” he said slowly. “Perhaps you’ve exhausted the scope of this particular thesis, but if I were your advisor, I would definitely be amiss if I didn’t suggest that you might continue delving into the past, perhaps using this as a springboard into something you might publish.”

“Really?” Dean felt a little whiplash from the sudden change in conversational direction, but he couldn’t deny the appeal of possibly getting to keep working with Castiel.

“Definitely,” Castiel said. “Of course, a project of that breadth would definitely benefit from first-hand observation and study. You’d never get away with publishing a book on Lord Derwentwater without visiting Dilston Castle. Ideally, you’d time your visit to see the Northern Lights glowing, the way they shone on the night he was beheaded.”

“Which would be in the winter,” Dean said, his mind spinning.

Castiel hummed affirmatively. “It can be hard to see them here, but in northern England, we’ve been able to get at least a glimpse for the last few years, around the end of February. Tell me, Dean. Have you looked into travel grants? Considered visiting, treading the ground your ancestor walked?” Suddenly and uncharacteristically shy, Castiel glanced away from the camera. “I’d be happy to help. If you wanted.”

Dean didn’t even have to consider. “I want,” he said.

* * *

“Anna Maria, the grieving widow, said to have died young of a broken heart,” Castiel murmured, clearly aiming for a grim tone.

“I thought it was smallpox,” Dean murmured back impishly. He couldn’t stop grinning, even as the two of them walked through castle ruins that were objectively really damn creepy. Castiel had insisted that they visit at night, as well as during the day, to add to the “atmosphere.”

“Hush,” Castiel said, though he was smiling too. “Don’t ruin the mood. Their ghosts will never show themselves to us if they think you’re mocking.”

“Oops, sorry,” Dean said, completely insincerely. Raising his voice, he added, “Sorry, my lord, my lady!” Both men found themselves choking down their laughter then, struggling to regain composure before they could continue their stroll.

“So this is Devil’s Water? This little creek?” Dean clarified when they moved on. The little footbridge over the moving water looked much more macabre in the dim dying light.

“Yes, the most common spot for sighting the spirits of Lord and Lady Derwentwater,” Castiel confirmed. “Sometimes just ghostly orbs, or occasionally even dark spectres, carrying lamps as they walk together across their grounds.”

Despite his skepticism over the legend, Dean felt a chill in his spine. “Well, at least they’d be together,” he said, shivering. Castiel, apparently noticing the tremble, reached between them and took Dean’s hand in his own. As simple as that, they were holding hands, as naturally as if they’d been doing it for years.

“They’re bound to each other,” Castiel said, “certainly in legend, and perhaps in a manner more literal. They might have had only a few years together in life, but maybe Fate intended something longer for them.”

“You think Fate works like that, then?” Dean asked. Ahead of them, the mists swirled around the entrance to a small copse of trees, and he realized he was trying to see shapes in the haze.

Castiel stopped walking, turning to face Dean fully. “Well,” he said, “I’ve been working in the archives here for years, mostly doing cataloguing and digitization. The one and only time I willingly take on a project that involves an outside research project…” He looked Dean up and down, smile spreading slowly. “Fate or no Fate, I’m definitely feeling a bit compelled.”

The goosebumps on Dean’s skin had nothing to do with the cool temperatures or the fog in the air. “Think the ghosts would mind if I kissed you on their bridge?” he asked, stepping closer. Castiel didn’t bother answering, instead using his grip on Dean’s hand to haul him forward the last step so that he could kiss the breath from Dean’s lungs.

Behind them, the mist seemed to glitter. It was probably nothing more than glow worms. Neither Castiel nor Dean even noticed, anyway.


End file.
